Sarvis/Service Berry tree

[truckinbutch]

How many of you know why this tree got this name ?
How many of you have had to help dig a grave in a family plot and then come back after the graveside service and complete the burial ?

 

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[stefen]

truckinbutch,

Intreging question.

Actually "Sarvis" is one of the number of common names for the plant, an old english pronunciation for the modern word "Service', thus ofen pronounced: Serviceberry (Sarvisberry). The latin botanical name of the plant genus is "Amelanchier".

Stefen


Here is some further information borrowed from the internet:

The serviceberry tree goes by many names, depending upon where you live or, sometimes, the species or cultivar. Learning the stories behind this early blooming shrub brings an appreciation for the richness of both cultural and natural history.

One can literally watch the hourly changes as spring bursts forth. It’s hard to know where to put your attention, amidst all the flowering trees – the dogwoods blooming on cue for the Festival, the audacious magenta flowering crabapple, redbud blossoms lining dark branches in perfect counterpoint, like tiny purple Christmas lights.

If spring seems to be moving too fast, you can always travel to a higher elevation and catch it again. If headed to the hills, the one tree one should be looking for is the serviceberry, whose white showy flowers have always been a reliable marker of spring, but pass so quickly that you may have only a few days before the wind snatches them from the bud and soft green leaves unfurl in their place.

Serviceberry belongs to the genus Amelanchier, in turn a member of the rose family along with chokeberry, hawthorn, apple, plum, and pear; mountain ash and, of course, the rose. There several dozen species of native serviceberry in North America with Virginia being home to three of them: Amelanchier arborae (the downy serviceberry), A. Canadensis (the shadblow serviceberry), and A. Laevis (the Allegheny – or smooth — serviceberry). It’s known by other names, too: shadbush, sarvis, sarviceberry, Saskatoon serviceberry, Juneberry, pigeon berry, mespilus, and currant tree – colloquial names born from the cultures of peoples who lived the annual cycles of plants and wildlife.

All varieties, including cultivars, are early blooming shrub or small trees that light up the otherwise drab landscape of woodlands and field edges before just about anything else has come in to flower – around here, in early March … though New Englanders and Canadians have to wait many more weeks beyond to see their first color from the serviceberry.

In the southern highlands, the plant is often called sarvis or sarvisberry. This pronunciation is commonly thought to derive from the season in the mountains when the springtime thaw made it possible for traveling preachers to reach their communities in the hills. In some places, frozen ground prevented the burial of those who had died in the winter – as soon as possible in the spring, the bodies were removed from icehouses and properly buried. But ministers made other celebrations possible – and the women went to the hills to gather the blooms for baptisms, weddings, and the regular Sunday services.

Word historians have concluded that there is another explanation for this name, sarvis. They believe that the American serviceberry was named by settlers because its fruit bore resemblance to the service, a mostly forgotten English fruit somewhat like a pear, which, though, unrelated to the American serviceberry, was often called, sarvis.

The sarvisberry offers some of the first early summer berries, tasty reddish-purple pomes that are a welcome treat to robins, bluebirds and other fruit eating species, giving rise to another common name, the Juneberry. Juneberries were used by Native Americans, pounded into meat to make pemmican – and even now, they are collected by those who appreciate them for jams, cobblers, and wines.

Most of us know that the names shadbush – and shadblow – derive from the timing of bloom coinciding with the run of shad in the rivers – those anadramous fish that live in the ocean but travel up our Atlantic coastal rivers annually to spawn in freshwater. The white blooms were a sure marker for the Native Americans and colonial settlers that this importance source of early spring protein would soon to be available.

Flowering on the cusp of spring, fruiting on the new edge of summer, brightening the dark of gray woodlands, the serviceberry surely is a sign of transition. Since the removal of the Woolen Mills Dam in Charlottesville has made the upriver spawning of shad in our watershed more likely, my quest for the white color in the hills is that much more meaningful – colored by optimism based in the biology of fish and bloom, in the perfect timing of spring.

 

[truckinbutch]

BOY!HOWDY! And thank ya ,Stefen . Had I posted all that someone would have pegged me as full of it .
You , however , covered every aspect of the plant in such a manner that everyone should gain some education from your post as I did .
Thanks , again ....
Jim

 

[stefen]

Just responding your question...see my PM